Part 9

But all the varied peoples, the curious half-wild, half-patriarchal life, the fruits and flowers, the strangeness of the place, could not divert my thoughts from the three lone pathetic figures, followed by their dog, which in my mind’s eye I saw making northward, as a wild goose finds its path in spring, leaving no traces of its passage by the way. I wondered what they thought of, how they looked upon the world, if they respected all they saw of civilized communities upon their way, or whether they pursued their journey like a horse let loose returning to his birthplace, anxious alone about arriving at the goal. So Monterey became a memory; the Cerro de la Silla last vanishing, when full five leagues upon the road. The dusty plains all white with alkali, the grey-green sage-bushes, the salt and crystal-looking rivers, the Indians bending under burdens, and the women sitting at the cross roads selling tortillas—all now had changed. Through oceans of tall grass, by muddy rivers in which alligators basked, by “bayous,” “resacas,” and by “bottoms” of alluvial soil, in which grew cotton-woods, black-jack, and post-oak, with gigantic willows; through countless herds of half-wild horses, lighting the landscape with their colours, and through a rolling prairie with vast horizons bounded by faint blue mountain chains, we took our way. Out of the thickets of “mezquite” wild boars peered upon the path; rattlesnakes sounded their note of warning or lay basking in the sun; at times an antelope bounded across our track, and the rare villages were fortified with high mud walls, had gates, and sometimes drawbridges, for all the country we were passing through was subject to invasions of “los Indios Bravos,” and no one rode a mile without the chance of an attack. When travellers met they zigzagged to and fro like battleships in the old days striving to get the “weather gauge,” holding their horses tightly by the head, and interchanging salutations fifty yards away, though if they happened to be Texans and Mexicans they only glared, or perhaps yelled an obscenity at one another in their different tongues. Advertisements upon the trees informed the traveller that the place to stop at was the “Old Buffalo Camp” in San Antonio, setting forth its whisky, its perfect safety both for man and beast, and adding curtly it was only a short four hundred miles away. Here for the first time in our journey we sent out a rider about half-a-mile ahead to scan the route, ascend the little hills, keep a sharp eye on “Indian sign,” and give us warning by a timely shot, all to dismount, “corral” the waggons, and be prepared for an attack of Indians, or of the roaming bands of rascals who like pirates wandered on the plains. Dust made us anxious, and smoke ascending in the distance set us all wondering if it was Indians, or a shepherd’s fire; at halting time no one strayed far from camp, and we sat eating with our rifles by our sides, whilst men on horseback rode round the mules, keeping them well in sight, as shepherds watch their sheep. About two leagues from Juarez a traveller bloody with spurring passed us carrying something in his hand; he stopped and held out a long arrow with an obsidian head, painted in various colours, and feathered in a peculiar way. A consultation found it to be “Apache,” and the man galloped on to take it to the governor of the place to tell him Indians were about, or, as he shouted (following the old Spanish catchword), “there were Moors upon the coast.”

Juarez we slept at, quite secure within the walls; started at daybreak, crossing the swiftly-running river just outside the town, at the first streak of light; journeyed all day, still hearing nothing of the retreating Mescaleros, and before evening reached Las Navas, which we found astir, all lighted up, and knots of people talking excitedly, whilst in the plaza the whole population seemed to be afoot. At the long wooden tables set about with lights, where in a Mexican town at sundown an al fresco meal of kid stewed in red pepper, “tamales” and “tortillas,” is always laid, the talk was furious, and each man gave his opinion at the same time, after the fashion of the Russian Mir, or as it may be that we shall yet see done during debates in Parliament, so that all men may have a chance to speak, and yet escape the ignominy of their words being caught, set down, and used against them, after the present plan. The Mescaleros had been seen passing about a league outside the town. A shepherd lying hidden, watching his sheep, armed with a rifle, had spied them, and reported that they had passed close to him; the woman coming last and carrying in her arms a little dog; and he “thanked God and all His holy saints who had miraculously preserved his life.” After the shepherd’s story, in the afternoon firing had been distinctly heard towards the small rancho of Las Crucecitas, which lay about three leagues further on upon the road. All night the din of talk went on, and in the morning when we started on our way, full half the population went with us to the gate, all giving good advice; to keep a good look-out, if we saw dust to be certain it was Indians driving the horses stolen from Las Crucecitas, then to get off at once, corral the waggons, and above all to put our trust in God. This we agreed to do, but wondered why out of so many valiant men not one of them proffered assistance, or volunteered to mount his horse and ride with us along the dangerous way.

The road led upwards towards some foothills, set about with scrubby palms; not fifteen miles away rose the dark mountains of the Santa Rosa chain, and on a little hill the rancho stood, flat-roofed and white, and seemingly not more than a short league away, so clear the light, and so immense the scale of everything upon the rolling plain. I knew that in the mountains the three Indians were safe, as the whole range was Indian territory; and as I saw them struggling up the slopes, the little dog following them footsore, hanging down its head, or carried as the shepherd said in the “she-devil’s” arms, I wished them luck after their hegira, planned with such courage, carried out so well, had ended, and they were back again amongst the tribe.

Just outside Crucecitas we met a Texan who, as he told us, owned the place, and lived in “kornkewbinage with a native gal,” called, as he said, “Pastory,” who it appeared of all the females he had ever met was the best hand to bake “tortillers,” and whom, had she not been a Catholic, he would have made his wife. All this without a question on our part, and sitting sideways on his horse, scanning the country from the corner of his eye. He told us that he had “had right smart of an Indian trouble here yesterday just about afternoon. Me and my ‘vaquerys’ were around looking for an estray horse, just six of us, when close to the ranch we popped kermash right upon three red devils, and opened fire at once. I hed a Winchester, and at the first fire tumbled the buck; he fell right in his tracks, and jest as I was taking off his scalp, I’m doggoned if the squaw and the young devil didn’t come at us jest like grizzly bars. Wal, yes, killed ’em, o’ course, and anyhow the young ’un would have growed up; but the squaw I’me sort of sorry about. I never could bear to kill a squaw, though I’ve often seen it done. Naow here’s the all-firedest thing yer ever heard; jes’ as I was turning the bodies over with my foot a little Indian dog flies at us like a ‘painter,’ the varmint, the condemndest little buffler I ever struck. I was for shootin’ him, but ‘Pastory’—that’s my ‘kornkewbyne’—she up and says it was a shame. Wal, we had to bury them, for dead Injun stinks worst than turkey-buzzard, and the dodgasted little dog is sitting on the grave, ’pears like he’s froze, leastwise he hastn’t moved since sun-up, when we planted the whole crew.”

Under a palm-tree not far from the house the Indians’ grave was dug, upon it, wretched and draggled, sat the little dog. “Pastory” tried to catch it all day long, being kind-hearted though a “kornkewbyne”; but, failing, said “God was not willing,” and retired into the house. The hours seemed days in the accursed place till the sun rose, gilding the unreached Santa Rosa mountains, and bringing joy into the world. We harnessed up the mules, and started silently out on the lonely road; turning, I checked my horse, and began moralizing on all kinds of things; upon tenacity of purpose, the futility of life, and the inexorable fate which mocks mankind, making all effort useless, whilst still urging us to strive. Then the grass rustled, and across an open space a small white object trotted, looking furtively around, threw up its head and howled, ran to and fro as if it sought for something, howled dismally again, and after scratching in the ground, squatted dejectedly on the fresh-turned-up earth which marked the Indians’ grave.

SIDI BU ZIBBALA

RELIGIOUS persecution with isolation from the world, complete as if the Lebanon were an atoll island in the Paumotus group; a thousand years of slavery, and centuries innumerable of traditions of a proud past, the whole well filtered through the curriculum of an American missionary college, had made Maron Mohanna the strange compound that he was. Summer and winter dressed in a greasy black frock-coat, hat tilted on his head, as if it had been a fez; dilapidated white-topped mother-of-pearl bebuttoned boots, a shirt which seemed to come as dirty from the wash as it went there; his shoulders sloping and his back bent in a perpetual squirm, Mohanna shuffled through the world with the exterior of a pimp, but yet with certain aspirations towards a wild life which seldom are entirely absent from any member of the Arab race. So in his village of the Lebanon he grew to man’s estate, and drifted after the fashion of his countrymen into a precarious business in the East. Half proxenete, half dragoman, servile to all above him and civil for prudence’ sake to all below, he passed through the various degrees of hotel tout, seller of cigarettes, and guide to the antiquities of whatever town he happened to reside in, to the full glory of a shop in which he sold embroideries, attar of roses, embroidered slippers and all the varied trash which tourists buy in the bazaars of the Levant. But all the time, and whilst he studied French and English with a view to self-advancement, the ancient glories of the Arab race were always in his mind. Himself a Christian of the Christians, reared in that hotbed of theology the Lebanon, where all the creeds mutually show their hatred of each other, and display themselves in their most odious aspects; and whilst hating the Mohammedans as a first principle of his belief, he found himself mysteriously attracted to their creed. Not that his reason was seduced by the teachings of the Koran, but that somehow the stately folly of the whole scheme of life evolved by the ex-camel-driver appealed to him, as it has oftentimes appealed to stronger minds than his. The call to prayers, the half-contemplative, half-militant existence led by Mohammedans; the immense simplicity of their hegemony; the idea of a not impossible one God, beyond men’s ken, looking down frostily through the stars upon the plains, a Being to be evoked without much hope of being influenced, took hold of him and set him thinking whether all members of the Arab race ought not to hold one faith. And in addition to his speculations upon faith and race, vaguely at times it crossed his mind, as I believe it often crosses the minds of almost every Arab (and Syrians not a few), “If all else fail, I can retire into the desert, join the tribes and pass a pleasant life, sure of a wife or two, a horse, a lance, a long flint gun, a bowl of camel’s milk, and a black tent in which to rest at night.”

Little indeed are the chances of a young educated Syrian to make his living in the Lebanon. A certain modicum of the young men is always absorbed into the ranks of the various true faiths which send out missionaries to convert Arab-speaking races, and those so absorbed generally pass their lives preaching shamefacedly that which they partially believe, to those whose faith is fixed. Others again gravitate naturally to Cairo to seek for Government employment, or to write in the Arabic press, taking sides for England or for France, as the editors of the opposing papers make it worth their while. But the great bulk of the intellectual Syrian proletariat emigrates to New York and there lives in a quarter by itself, engaging in all kinds of little industries, dealing in Oriental curiosities, or publishing newspapers in the Arab tongue. There they pass much of their time lounging at their shop-doors with slippers down at heel, in smoking cigarettes, in drinking arrack, and in speculating when their native country shall be free.

To none of these well-recognized careers did Maron Mohanna feel himself impelled. Soon tiring of his shop he went to Egypt, worked on a newspaper, and then became a teacher of Arabic to Europeans; was taken by one of them to London, where he passed some years earning a threadbare livelihood by translating Arabic documents and writing for the press. When out of work he tramped about the streets to cheat his hunger, and if in funds frequented music-halls, and lavished his hard-earned money on the houris who frequent such places, describing them as “fine and tall, too fond of drink, and perhaps colder in the blood than are the women of the East.” Not often did his fortunes permit him such extravagances, and he began to pass his life hanging about the City in the wake of the impossible gang of small company-promoters, who in the purlieus of the financial world weave shoddy Utopias, and are the cause of much vain labour to postmen and some annoyance to the public, but who as far as I can see live chiefly upon hope deferred, for their prospectuses seem to be generally cast into the basket, from which no share list ever has returned. But in the darkest of poor Maron Mohanna’s blackest days, his dreams about the Arab race never forsook him, and he studied much to master all the subtleties of his native tongue, talking with Arabs, Easterns, Persians, and the like in the lunch-room of the British Museum, where scholars of all nations, blear-eyed and bent, eat sawdust sandwiches and drink lemonade, whilst wearing out their eyes and lives for pittances which a dock labourer would turn from in disgust. Much did the shivering Easterns confabulate, much did they talk of grammar, of niceties of diction, much did they dispute, often they talked of women, sometimes of horses, for on both all Easterns, no matter how they pass their lives, have much to say, and what they say is often worth attention, for in both matters their ancestors were learned when ours rode shaggy ponies, and their one miserable wife wrestled with fifteen fair-haired children in the damp forests where the Briton was evolved. How long Maron Mohanna dwelt in London is matter of uncertainty, to what abyss of poverty he fell, or if in the worst times he tramped the Embankment, sleeping on a bench and dreaming ever of the future of the Arab race, is not set down. The next act of his life finds him the trusted manager of the West African Company at Cape Juby. There he enjoyed a salary duly paid every quarter, and was treated with much deference by the employees as being the only man the company employed who could speak Arabic. Report avers he had embraced either the Wesleyan or the Baptist faith, as the chief shareholders of the affair were Nonconformists, whose ancestors having (as they alleged) enjoyed much persecution for their faith, were well resolved that every one who came within their power should outwardly, at least, conform to their own tenets in dogma and church government.

Established at Cape Juby, Maron Mohanna for the first time enjoyed consideration, and for a while the world went well with him. He duly wrote reports, inspected goods, watched the arrival of the _Sahara_, the schooner which came once a month from Lanzarote, and generally endeavoured to discharge the duties of a manager, with some success. The chiefs Mohammed-wold-el-Biruc and Bu-Dabous, with others from the far-distant districts of El Juf, El Hodh, and from Tishit, all flattered him, offering him women from their various tribes and telling him that he too was of their blood. So by degrees either the affinity of race, the community of language or the provoking commonness of his European comrades, drew him to seek his most congenial friends amongst the natives of the place. Then came the woman: the woman who always creeps into the life of man as the snake crept into the garden by the Euphrates; and Mohanna knowing that by so doing he forfeited all chance of his career, gave up his post, married an Arab girl, and became a desert Arab, living on dates and camel’s milk in the black Bedouin tents. Children he had, to whom, though desert-born, he gave the names of Christians, feeling perhaps the nostalgia of civilization in the wilds, as he had felt before the nostalgia of the desert, in his blood. And living in the desert with his hair grown long, dressed in the blue “baft” clothes, a spear in his hand and shod with sandals, he yet looked like a European clerk in masquerade.

The bushy plains stretched like an ocean towards the mysterious regions of El Juf and Timbuctoo, Wadan, Tijigja, Atar and Shingiet, and the wild steppes where the Tuaregs veiled to the eyes roam as they roamed before they hastened to the call of Jusuf-ibn Tachfin to invade El Andalos and lose the battle at Las Navas de Tolosa: the battle where San Isidro in a shepherd’s guise guided the Christian host. Men came and went, on camels, horses, donkeys and on foot; all armed, all beggars, from the rich chief to the poorest horseman of the tribe; and yet all dignified, draped in their fluttering rags, and looking more like men than those whom eighteen centuries of civilization and of trade have turned to apes. Men fought, careering on their horses on the sand, firing their guns and circling round like gulls, shouting their battle-cries; men prayed, turning to Mecca at the appointed hours; men sat for hours half in a dream thinking of much or nothing, who can say; whilst women in the tents milked camels, wove the curious geometric-patterned carpets which they use, and children grew up straight, active and as fleet of foot as roe.

Inside the factory the European clerks smoked, drank, and played at cards: they learned no Arabic, for why should those who speak bad English struggle with other tongues? Meanwhile the time slipped past, leaving as little trace as does a jackal when on a windy day he sneaks across the sand. Only Maron Mohanna seemed to have no place in the desert world which he had dreamed of as a boy; and in the world of Europe typified by the factory on the beach his place was lost. On marrying he had, of course, abjured the faith implanted in him in the Lebanon, and yet though now one of the “faithful” he found no resting-place. Neither of the two contending faiths had sunk much into his soul, but still at times he saw that the best part of any faith is but the life it brings. For him, though he had dreamed of it, the wild desert life held little charm; horses he loathed, suffering acutely when on their backs, and roaming after chance gazelles or ostriches with the horsemen of the tribe did not amuse him; but though too proud to change his faith again, at times he caught himself longing for his once-loathed shop in the Levant. So that clandestinely he grew to haunt the factory and the fort, as before, in secret, he had hung round the straw-thatched mosque, and loitered in the tents. His one amusement was to practise with a pistol at a mark, and by degrees he taught his wife to shoot, till she became a marksman able to throw an orange in the air and hit it with a pistol bullet three times out of five. But even pistol-shooting palled on his soul at last, and he grew desperate, not being allowed to leave the tribe or go into the fort except in company with others, and keenly watched as those who change their faith and turn Mohammedans are ever watched amongst the Arab race. But in his darkest hour fate smiled upon him, and the head chief wanting an agent in the islands sent him to Lanzarote, and in the little town of Arrecife it seemed to him that he had found a resting-place at last. Once more he dressed himself in European clothes, he handled goods, saw now and then a Spanish newspaper a fortnight old; talked much of politics, lounged in the Alameda, and was the subject of much curiosity amongst the simple dwellers in the little town. Some said he had denied his God amongst the heathen; others again that he suffered much for conscience’ sake; whilst he attended mass occasionally, going with a sense of doing something wrong, and feeling more enjoyment in the service than in the days of his belief. His wife dressed in the Spanish fashion, wore a mantilla, sometimes indeed a hat, and looked not much unlike an island woman, and was believed by all to have thrown off the errors of her faith and come into the fold.

But notwithstanding all the amenities of the island life, the unlimited opportunities for endless talk (so dear to Syrians), the half-malignant pleasure he experienced in dressing up his wife in Christian guise, sending for monstrous hats bedecked with paroquets from Cadiz, and gowns of the impossible shades of apple-green and yellow which in those days were sent from Paris to Spain and to her colonies, he yet was dull. And curiously enough, now that he was a double renegade his youthful dreams haunted him once again. He saw himself (in his mind’s eye) mounted upon his horse, flying across the sands, and stealthily and half ashamed he used to dress himself in the Arab clothes and sit for hours studying the Koran, not that he believed its teachings, but that the phraseology enchanted him, as it has always, both in the present and the past, bewitched all Arabs, and perhaps in his case it spoke to him of the illusory content which in the desert life he sought, but had not found.

He read the “Tarik-es-Sudan,” and learned that Allah marks even the lives of locusts, and that a single pearl does not remain on earth by him unweighed. The Djana of Essoyuti, El Ibtihaj, and the scarce “Choice of Marvels” written in far Mossul by the learned Abu Abdallah ibn Abderrahim (he of Granada in the Andalos), he read; and as he read his love renewed itself for the old race whose blood ran in his veins. He read and dreamed, and twice a renegade in practice, yet remained a true believer in the aspirations of his youth. He sailed in schooners, running from island port to island port down the trade winds; landed at little towns, and hardly marked the people in the rocky streets, Spanish in language, and in type quite Guanche, and but a step more civilized than the wild tribesmen from the coast that he had left. Then thinking maybe of his sojourn in London, and its music-halls, frequented uninterestedly the house of Rita, Rita la Jerezana; sat in the courtyard under the fig-tree with its trunk coated with white-wash, and listened to the “Cante Hondo,” saw the girls dance Sevillanas; and drinking zarzaparilla syrup, learned that of all the countries in the world Spain is the richest, for there even the “women of the life” cast their accounts in ounces.